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New York (I-Newswire) October 13, 2011 - BARACK OBAMA IN HAWAI’I AND INDONESIA:
The Making of a Global President by Dinesh Sharma
How did a young, rookie Illinois senator, with a name derived from Swahili and Arabic, an African-American identity, and a biracial heritage, achieve the ultimate American dream: growing up to be President? To millions of Americans, including many who voted for him, the landmark election of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th President of United States remains a revelation. Much has been written about Obama’s mastery of the Internet, his victory for racial equality, and his charisma. Yet, the exceptional qualities that distinguish Barack Obama as a leader for our changing times—his multicultural roots and his international sensibilities—have been largely overlooked.
“Barack Obama is born of a multicultural America at the cusp of the age of globalization,” states Dinesh Sharma, cultural psychologist. “He is truly America’s hybrid president, a man of many continents, races, cultures, and histories.” In his new book, Barack Obama in Hawai’i and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President (Praeger; September 30, 2011), Sharma presents the first cultural biography of a trailblazing, transformational leader—not only the first Black president in America, but also the first multicul¬tural head of state of any Western democracy. Drawing on extensive research in the fields of psychology, anthropology, education and on the ground interviews in Jakarta, Honolulu, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Sharma reveals, in riveting detail, how Obama’s rare multicultural upbringing shaped his character and his worldview, preparing him to meet the challenges of leadership—from demographic changes at home to rising competition from Asia to the perceived threat of radical Islam—in the global 21st century. “Obama has charted a new course for America, backed heavily by his own biography,” the author attests.
Informed by newly gathered insights from people who knew Barack when he was known as Barry (including his half-Indonesian sister Maya Soetoro-Ng and his teachers in Jakarta, where he attended both Islamic Public and Catholic schools, as well as at the Punahou School in Honolulu), Barack Obama in Hawai’i and Indonesia offers a chronological and psychosocial journey of Obama’s development as a globally-minded individual and political leader. Chapters shed light on:
• The legacy of his parents’ short-lived marriage, with new insights into how his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, a white anthropologist and humanitarian from Kansas, idealized the native Kenyan father, Barack Obama, Senior, who abandoned him. Ann instilled young Barry with a sense of moral privilege as a black man and the steely determination to achieve greatness, including the impetus to be the first Black President.
• The women who shaped Obama: his mother, Ann; his grandmother, Madelyn; and his wife, Michelle. His mother’s multicultural consciousness and progressive idealism, his grandmother’s Midwestern pragmatism, and his wife’s strength and understanding of the African-American experience all contributed to the making of President Obama. The Dunham women gave Obama a head start in life, intellectually, socially, and emotionally, which Michelle Obama first recognized as presidential timber.
• The impact of his early global education, until age ten, in Jakarta, where Obama lived on the “Islamic street” with colorful characters in his house, including a gay cook, and came to see how different religions, particularly Islam and Christianity, could live side by side. Facing abysmal poverty, he came to recognize the positive force of industrialized, developed economies on the lives of people in the developing world.
• The truth behind allegations that Obama is a Muslim. While living in the largest Islamic democracy, Indonesia, Obama did not convert to Islam or go through any rite of passage or ritual circumcision; neither was he adopted by his Indonesian, secular Muslim stepfather. However, in third grade, when he was nine years old, Obama wrote an essay about his dream to be president one day and used to imitate the Indonesian President Suharto.
• Obama’s apprenticeship in becoming a leader at the Punahou School. Sheltered from the negative stereotypes of Black men on the mainland, but still a minority in Hawai’i, Obama began to search for his own identity while learning to navigate different cultural worlds with ease. With its emphasis on community service and moral accountability, this elite preparatory school also planted the seeds for Obama’s career in public service and opened his mind to the ‘magical’ power of words in moving people to political action.
• The circumstances surrounding the death of his long-lost father and the ensuing autobiography, “Dreams from My Father”. Sharma delves into Obama’s haunting dreams, where his father is in a jail and Obama is trying to get him out. These dreams reverberate throughout his life story and political identity and make him, along with many other fatherless presidents from George Washington to Bill Clinton who raised themselves by their bootstraps, an American archetype.
In the final chapters, Barack Obama in Hawai’i and Indonesia delves into Obama’s transition to the mainland, the affirmation of his African-American identity in New York and Chicago, and his calling as a global leader. As Sharma makes clear, Obama’s multicultural childhood and adolescence strongly influenced the formation of his character and values, his approach to global issues as President, and his vision for America. Bringing his unique vantage point as a new immigrant as well as his rigorous social science and research expertise to the table, Dinesh Sharma can discuss:
Why Barack Obama is truly the first global President and an exemplary transformational leader.
How President Obama’s initiatives, especially his renewed science, math, engineering, and technology policy in education, have the potential to revive the American dream for the next generation.
How President Obama’s leadership has dramatically improved America’s image around the world (despite his plummeting approval ratings at home) and positioned our nation to proudly reclaim its role as a global leader.
Providing a new understanding of a complex man and a controversial President, Barack Obama in Hawai’i and Indonesia is a biography of interest to Obama’s ardent supporters and his detractors as well. By delving into Barack Obama’s core self, driving motivations, and lasting dreams , Dinesh Sharma restores faith in not only the President’s ability to lead America, but also in America’s ability to lead the world in today’s challenging, global times.
About the Author
DINESH SHARMA, PhD, is a cultural psychologist and marketing consultant with a doctorate from Harvard University. He holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology and has consulted for Fortune 500 clients across different industries, including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, media, publishing, and consumer products, for nearly ten years. He is a senior fellow at the Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Research at St. Francis College, New York. The author/editor of three previous books, he is a regular contributor to Asia Times Online, writing on globalization, politics, terrorism, AfPak region, and India-US relations. His articles have appeared in a range of other newspapers and journals, including the Wall Street Journal Online, Far Eastern Economic Review, Middle East Times, Health Affairs, Biotech Law Review, Genomics, Society and Policy, and International Psychology Bulletin. He lives in the Princeton, New Jersey area with his wife and two children.
Title: BARACK OBAMA IN HAWAI’I AND INDONESIA
The Making of a Global President
Author: Dinesh Sharma
Release date: September 30, 2011
Price: $35.95 Hardcover
Pages: 309, with photo insert
ISBN: 978-0-313-38533-9
Publisher: Praeger, an imprint of ABC-CLIO
*Also available as an eBook.
About Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Research:
International Research and Consulting
Company Contact Information
Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Research
Dinesh Sharma, Senior Fellow
180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Hts., New York
11201
Phone : 917-405-5878
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